[JURIST] US Chief Immigration Judge Michael Creppy [official profile] ruled Wednesday that John Demjanjuk [Wikipedia profile], a retired auto worker living in Cleveland who is accused of having been a Nazi prison camp guard, should be deported to his native Ukraine, Germany or Poland, rejecting arguments that he could be tortured if returned. Demjanjuk is suspected of being "Ivan the Terrible", an infamously brutal guard at Poland's Treblinka [PBS backgrounder] death camp during World War II. Demjanjuk has claimed that the accusation is based on mistaken identity. The case dates back to 1977 [Cleveland Plain Dealer report], when the Justice Department originally asked for Demjanjuk's citizenship to be revoked. He was extradited to Israel and sentenced to death for war crimes, but the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 1993 and he returned to the US. In 2002, Demjanjuk again lost his US citizenship [JURIST report] after a judge found that World War II evidence showed he worked in the Nazi concentration camps. In June, Creppy initially ruled that Demjanjuk could be deported [US DOJ press release] but was required to rule on the matter of possible harm to him before that decision could be properly appealed. Demjanjuk has 30 days to appeal the latest decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals [court backgrounder] and his lawyers have vowed to appeal both the deportation order and the initial ruling against him. AP has more.
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